Up to now, I hadn’t really thought much about disseminating my research. My idea to focus on promoting self-efficacy through flexible assessments in visual design education (this just might need to be refined) is based on my own struggles as an instructor. The thought that others are struggling with the same thing and may find my research valuable never occurred to me. My initial plan was to share my learnings with my fellow instructors through a lunch-and-learn style presentation and informal conversations. If my research goes extremely well then I could potentially submit it for publication at The International Journal of Art and Design Education. I have almost no online presence so dissemination through a blog or social media would result in more of a light dusting than a dissemination. Similarly, I am not currently involved in any online design education forums, Slack groups, or Discord servers. I think I may need to get more involved…

So if my potential options are to share my findings with my co-workers or publish in a journal, let’s explore what that would look like.

Lunch-and-learn

For a context like this, I will need to take my findings from the ARP and reduce them to a more manageable size. Providing other instructors with that project may be useful if they are very interested, but it doesn’t fit the needs of a lunch-and-learn. For that, I will need to refine my work down to a few actionable items that can be quickly and clearly communicated through a slide deck. Those actionable items will also require brief evidence from my research to show why they might be effective. This reinforces the thought I have had floating around in my head that my research should result in a list of actions one could implement into their teaching. Rather than a framework that shows a process, it would be suggestions of effective methods for promoting self-efficacy in your own course.

Publishing in a journal

This one has me a bit terrified and skeptical. I mainly just can’t imagine anything I research and write being valuable on a large enough scale to warrant publication. That being said, if I were to publish it would likely be in a more specific journal like The National Journal of Art and Design Education due to my research focusing on design education. For submitting to this journal, I would need to revise my research to keep to their 6,000 word limit and would need to adopt Harvard style for citations. I would also need to ensure that my final research was focused and relevant to the broader art and design education community rather than being overly specific to my own needs.

I’ve enjoyed thinking, exploring, and researching how I’m going to disseminate my work. I honestly can’t imagine having it published in a journal, but I’m keeping myself open to the idea.